Make no mistake – there is now a state of open warfare on the streets of our great city. Chicago police are reporting a dramatic spike in the number of homicides and shootings in one of the city’s bloodiest January's in history. Chicago has been a national symbol of gun violence since at least 2012. Now Chicago has seen close to 800 homicides in 2016, surpassing both totals for New York and LA combined. The Chicago police department has initiated a number of crime-fighting measures and spend millions of dollars on police overtime, but last year the number of homicides and shooting incidents rose yet again, and the bloodshed has continued so far this year in 2017.

New fatal shooting statistics prove that the Black Lives Matter movement, who wants to defund and de-arm the Chicago PD, has backfired on them with more then double the amount of BLACK LIVES KILLED in 2016, compared to 2015.

There has also been growing concern that the rising crime rate in Chicago, and around the country, can be linked to less aggressive policing in the wake of high-profile officer shootings, some of which were caught on camera and inflamed public outrage. Chicago police officers are making drastically fewer investigative stops and confiscating fewer guns as murders and shootings have increased so far this year. Now that the Chicago Police Department is the focus of an U.S. Justice Department investigation in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting, police officers now fear of getting caught up in a "bad situation" while making proactive investigative stops, which has contributed to less aggressive policing. The moral among the Chicago police officers is overwhelmingly LOW......Mayor Rahm Emanuel has utilized all of his resources in efforts to change the public perception of the Chicago PD. It was not enough....... We continue to see protest after protest attacking him, his administration, and the Chicago PD.

The anti-police sentiment in this country is at an all-time high, and the level of anger and frustration in our increasingly radicalized urban communities has reached a boiling point.The mainstream media and many national leaders on the left end of the spectrum have been stirring up strife and division for months on end. So now a toxic environment has been created which is inevitably going to lead to even more violence. At some recent “protest marches”, we have heard demonstrators enthusiastically chant slogans such as this: “CPD.....KKK.....Killing are kids everyday” . A more extreme example of the way this country deals with race and policing, which is to talk fanatically about police in order not to talk about the far more difficult problem of black on black crime.

The anti-police sentiment which now pervades our public discourse is not an accurate reflection of how the majority of Americans feel about law enforcement officers.

We are moving into a period of time when it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to be a police officer in Chicago. But most Chicago police officers that are serving our local communities are just average people trying to do their jobs, faced with the constant scrutiny from the media and the public eye. Without the police, crime would be wildly out of control, and I can guarantee we will see a steady rise in shootings and homicides in the city of Chicago. We as a community must come together and show our law enforcement officers that WE SUPPORT their efforts and that we STAND UNITED with them. Letting these brave men and women know that we care can make all the difference in the world. They have a tough job, day in and day out. Yet they continue to serve and protect.